The more corrupt the republic, the more numerous the laws.

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.

No human life, not even the life of a hermit, is possible without a world which directly or indirectly testifies to the presence of other human beings.

What experience and history teach is this—that nations and governments have never learned anything from history or acted upon any lessons they might have drawn from it.

The spirit of liberty is the spirit which is not too sure it is right.

The first requirement of a statesman is that he be dull.

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

You should never have your best trousers on when you go out to fight for freedom and truth.

Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense—nonsense upon stilts.

You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.

People revere the Constitution yet know so little about it—and that goes for some of my fellow senators.

I say violence is necessary. It is as American as cherry pie.

Sic semper tyrannis! The South is avenged.